Philostratus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| From there they set out around summer, riding themselves, and the guide with them. There was a groom for the camels, and all the supplies they needed were plentiful, since the king had provided them. The country they traveled through was prosperous, and the villages received them with attentive care; for the leading camel carried a gold bridle-piece on its forehead, so that those they met should know that the king was sending one of his friends.
2| As they approached the Caucasus, they say, they noticed that the land smelled sweeter. Let us make this mountain the starting point of the Taurus range, which runs through Armenia and Cilicia toward Pamphylia and Mycale; Mycale, which ends at the sea where the Carians live, should be considered the end of the Caucasus and not, as some say, its beginning. For Mycale's height is not yet great, while the summits of the Caucasus rise so high that the sun is divided around them. With another Taurus range it also encloses the whole of Scythia that borders on India, along Lake Maeotis and the left side of the Pontus, a length of about twenty thousand stadia; for that is the extent of the earth that the arm of the Caucasus covers. As for what is said of the Taurus in our own part of the world, that it runs beyond Armenia, it was long disbelieved but is now finally confirmed by the leopards: I know that they are caught in the spice-bearing country of Pamphylia. For they delight in spices, and drawing in the scents from far away they come from Armenia through the mountains to the gum of the storax, whenever the winds blow from it and the trees are full of sap. And they say that a leopard was once caught in Pamphylia together with a collar that it wore around its neck; the collar was gold and had an inscription in Armenian letters: KING ARSACES TO THE NYSIAN GOD. Arsaces was then king of Armenia, and he himself, I think, when he saw the leopard, dedicated it to Dionysus on account of the beast's great size. For Dionysus is called Nysian, after Nysa in India, by the Indians and by all the peoples toward the sunrise. For some time the leopard had been tamed to man and allowed a hand to touch and stroke her; but when spring maddened her, the season when even leopards are overcome by desire, she bounded off into the mountains in longing for males, wearing her ornament as she was, and was caught near the lower Taurus, drawn there by the spice. The Caucasus marks the boundary between India and Media, and with another arm it reaches down to the Red Sea.
3| The barbarians tell myths about this mountain, the same ones the Greeks sing about it: that Prometheus was bound there for his love of humankind, and that another Heracles (for they do not mean the Theban one, at any rate) would not tolerate this and shot the bird that Prometheus was feeding with his entrails. Some say that he was bound inside a cave, which is indeed pointed out at the foot of the mountain, and Damis says that fetters hang from the rocks, whose material is not easy to make out. Others say he was bound on the summit of the mountain. The summit has two peaks, and they say that his hands were bound to them, though the peaks are no less than a stadium apart, so huge was he. The people who live near the Caucasus regard the bird, the eagle, as their enemy; they burn down all the nests the eagles build on the crags by shooting fire-carrying arrows, and they set traps for them, saying that they are avenging Prometheus. So completely are they in thrall to the myth.
4| After passing the Caucasus they say they saw men four cubits tall, who were already dark-skinned, and others five cubits tall when they had gone beyond the river Indus. On the journey as far as this river they came upon the following things worth relating. They were traveling by bright moonlight, and the apparition of an empusa fell upon them, becoming now one thing and now another, and then nothing at all. Apollonius understood what it was. He himself abused the empusa and ordered those with him to do the same, for this, he said, was the remedy against an attack of this kind. And the apparition took to flight with a shrill squeal, as ghosts do.
5| Crossing the summit of the mountain and walking along it, since it was steep, Apollonius questioned Damis in this way. “Tell me,” he said, “yesterday, where were we?” “In the plain,” said Damis. “And today, Damis, where?” “On the Caucasus,” he said, “unless I have forgotten myself.” “When, then, were you lower down?” he asked again. “This is not even a proper question,” said Damis; “for yesterday we were traveling through a hollow of the earth, and today we are near the sky.” “Do you think then, Damis,” he said, “that yesterday's journey was down and today's up?” “By Zeus,” he said, “unless I am mad.” “What then do you suppose makes the roads differ from one another, or what more is today to you than yesterday?” “That yesterday,” said Damis, “I walked where many walk, and today where few.” “Why, Damis, is it not possible, by turning off the highways in a city, to walk among few of mankind?” “That is not what I meant,” said Damis, “but that yesterday we were conveyed through villages and people, and today we are climbing a trackless place that belongs to the divine, for you hear from the guide that the barbarians make it a home of gods”; and at the same time he looked up toward the top of the mountain. Apollonius, leading him on to what he had asked from the beginning, said, “Can you say, Damis, what you have understood about the divine, walking near the sky?” “Nothing,” he said. “And yet,” said Apollonius, “standing upon so great and divine a contrivance, you ought now to be bringing forth clearer opinions about the heavens and about the sun and the moon, which you perhaps think you will touch with a staff, standing beside this sky.” “What I knew yesterday about the divine,” said Damis, “I know today, and no other opinion about it has yet come to me.” “Then, Damis,” he said, “you happen to be still down, and you have taken nothing from the height, and you are as far from the sky as yesterday; and I had reason to ask you what I asked at the beginning, though you thought the question ridiculous.” “And yet,” said Damis, “I thought I would come down wiser, Apollonius, hearing that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae surveyed what is in the sky from Ionia's Mimas, and Thales of Miletus from nearby Mycale, and certain others, they say, made Pangaeus their place of study and others Athos. But I, having climbed the greatest height of these, shall come down no wiser than I was.” “Nor did they,” said Apollonius; “for such lookouts show the sky bluer and the stars larger and the sun coming up from the night, which are plain even to shepherds and goatherds. But how the divine takes care of the human race, and how it rejoices to be served by it, what virtue is, and justice, and temperance, neither Athos will show those who climb it, nor Olympus, so wondered at by the poets, unless the soul discerns them; and the soul, if it touches them pure and undefiled, I for my part would say leaps much higher than this Caucasus.”
6| Having crossed the mountain, they met men already riding on elephants. These people live between the Caucasus and the river Cophen, without settled livelihood, and are riders of this herd; and camels also carried some of them, which the Indians use for fast travel, and which cover a thousand stadia in a day without bending a knee anywhere. One of the Indians rode up on such a camel and asked the guide where they were going; when he heard the purpose of the journey he reported it to the nomads, who cried out as if delighted and bade them come near, and when they arrived offered them wine, which they contrive from palm trees, and honey from the same plant, and pieces of lions and leopards, whose skins were freshly flayed. They accepted everything but the meat, drove off the Indians, and went on toward the east.
7| While they were taking their midday meal beside a spring of water, Damis poured some of the wine from the Indians and said, “Here is the cup of Zeus the Savior for you, Apollonius, since it is a long while since you last drank; for you will not, I think, refuse this wine either, as you did the wine from the vines,” and at once he poured a libation, since he had mentioned Zeus. Apollonius laughed. “Are we not abstaining from money too, Damis?” “By Zeus, you have shown it in many places,” Damis said. “Then shall we abstain from a gold or silver drachma, and not be overcome by such a coin, though we see not only private men but kings gaping at it; and if someone gave us a bronze coin as if it were silver, or one gilded and adulterated, shall we take this, because it is not what the many strive for? And the Indians have coins of orichalc and of black bronze, with which everyone who comes to the country of the Indians must buy everything. What then? If these good nomads were offering us money, would you, Damis, seeing me refuse, have admonished and instructed me that money is what the Romans stamp, or the king of the Medes, whereas this is some other material, refined for the Indians? And if you had persuaded me of this, what would you have thought me? Would I not be adulterated, and one who has thrown away philosophy more shamefully than worthless soldiers throw away their shields? And yet when a shield has been thrown away, another may come to the one who threw it away, no worse than the first, as Archilochus thinks; but philosophy, how can it be recovered by one who has dishonored it and cast it off? And now Dionysus might forgive one who is not overcome by any wine; but if I were to choose the wine from the palms before the wine from the vine, he would be vexed, I know well, and would say that his gift has been outraged. And we are not far from the god, for you hear from the guide that Mount Nysa is near, on which Dionysus does many wonderful things, I think. Moreover, Damis, drunkenness does not come upon men from grapes alone, but the palm too makes them rave in much the same way; we have already met many of the Indians possessed by this wine, and some dance as they fall, some sing as they doze, like those among us who break up from a drinking party at night and out of season. That you consider this drink wine too, you make plain by pouring a libation from it to Zeus and offering all the prayers one offers over wine. This I have said to you, Damis, about myself; for I would not lead you away from drinking, nor these attendants, and I would permit you, too, to eat meat, since I see that abstaining from it advances you toward nothing, while for me it advances toward what I have agreed with philosophy since boyhood.” Damis and his party accepted this argument and welcomed the feasting, thinking they would travel more easily if they were fed more abundantly.
8| They crossed the river Cophen, themselves in boats and the camels on foot through the water, for the river was not yet large, and came into the territory ruled by the king, in which Mount Nysa stands, stretching up to a high summit, like Tmolus in Lydia; and it is possible to climb it, for cultivation has made paths up it. When they had gone up, they say they came upon a temple of Dionysus, which Dionysus himself planted for himself, with laurels standing in a circle around it, enclosing just so much ground as suffices for a temple of moderate size; he threw ivy and vines about it, over the laurels, and set up an image of himself inside, knowing that time would make the trees grow together and give a roof from them, which is now so joined that the shrine is neither rained upon nor blown through by wind. Sickles, baskets, wine-presses and the equipment about the presses are dedicated to Dionysus, in gold and silver, as though he were gathering the vintage. The image is made like an Indian youth, and carved of white stone. When he celebrates his rites and shakes Nysa, the cities beneath the mountain hear it and are lifted up with him.
9| About this Dionysus the Greeks differ from the Indians, and the Indians from one another. We say that the Theban marched against the Indians, campaigning and reveling, using as proofs among others the offering at Delphi, which the treasuries there keep in store: it is a disk of Indian silver, on which is inscribed: DIONYSUS SON OF SEMELE AND ZEUS, FROM THE INDIANS, TO APOLLO OF DELPHI. Of the Indians, those near the Caucasus and the river Cophen claim that he arrived as an Assyrian newcomer, familiar with the Theban's doings. But the peoples occupying the country that lies between the Hydraotes and the Indus, and the mainland beyond it, which ends at the river Ganges, say that Dionysus was a son of the river Indus, and that the man from Thebes came to him, took up the thyrsus, and gave himself to the rites; that he told him he was a son of Zeus and had been housed in his father's thigh for the sake of being born, and so obtained from him the mountain Meros, which Nysa adjoins, and planted Nysa for Dionysus, bringing the knee of the vine from Thebes, where Alexander also celebrated rites. But the inhabitants of Nysa say that Alexander did not go up the mountain, but wanted to, being ambitious and given to a love of antiquity, and that, fearing that the Macedonians, coming among vines that they had not looked on in a long while, would be carried away by longing for home or would take up some desire for wine, having by now grown used to water, he rode past Nysa, after he had prayed to Dionysus and made sacrifice at the mountain's foot. I know that in writing this I do not please some, because those who campaigned with Alexander did not record even this in accordance with the truth; but I at least must have truth, and if they too had praised it, they would not have deprived Alexander of this commendation also. For to climb the mountain and revel there, as they say he did, is less, I think, than not to have climbed it at all, for the sake of the army's endurance.
10| The rock Aornus, not far from Nysa, Damis says he did not see, since it lay off the road and the guide was afraid to turn aside anywhere from the straight way; but he heard that it was taken by Alexander, and that it is called Aornus not because it rises fifteen stadia (for the sacred birds fly even above that), but they say there is a cleft at the top of the rock which draws in the birds that fly over it, as one can see at Athens in the forecourt of the Parthenon and in many places in the land of the Phrygians and Lydians, and by this the rock has been called Aornus and is so.
11| Driving on toward the Indus, they met a boy of about thirteen years riding an elephant and striking the beast. As they marveled at the sight, Apollonius said, “Damis, what is the work of a good horseman?” “What else,” said Damis, “than to sit on the horse and rule it, and to turn it with the bridle and chastise it when it misbehaves, and to look ahead, so that the horse is not carried into a pit, or ditch, or chasm, when it goes through marsh or mud?” “And nothing else, Damis, shall we require of the good horseman?” “By Zeus,” Damis said, “to give the horse its rein when it springs up a steep place, but when it goes down a slope not to give way to it but to hold it back, and to stroke its ears or mane, and not always the whip: this seems to me the mark of a skilled horseman, and I would praise the man who rides in this way.” “And for the fighting man, the horseman of war, what is needed?” “The same things, Apollonius, and in addition to these, shooting and guarding oneself, charging and retreating, rolling up the enemy, and not letting the horse be startled when a shield clashes, or helmets flash, or the shout of paean-singers and war-cries arises; this, I think, belongs to horsemanship's skill.” “What then,” said Apollonius, “will you say of this rider on the elephant?” “It is far more wonderful, Apollonius,” he said, “that a boy so small should be set over so large a beast and steer it with that goad, which you see him driving into the elephant like an anchor, and that he feels no fear at the sight of the animal, or at its height, or at its great strength. To me this seems something more than human, and by Athena I would not have believed it if I had heard it from another.” “Well then,” said Apollonius, “if someone were willing to sell us the boy, would you buy him, Damis?” “By Zeus, yes,” he said, “at the price of everything I own. For to command the greatest creature the earth feeds, sitting on it as though one had seized a citadel, seems to me the sign of a free and brilliant nature.” “What use will you make of the boy, then,” said Apollonius, “if you do not buy the elephant as well?” “I will set him over my own household and my servants,” he said, “and he will govern them far better than I do.” “And are you not able to govern your own?” “In the same way that you are, Apollonius; for I have left my affairs behind and go about, as you do, eager to learn and studying what lies in foreign lands.” “But if you did buy the boy,” said Apollonius, “ and two horses came to you, one for racing and one for war, would you put him on the horses, Damis?” “On the racing horse, perhaps,” he said, “since I see others do so; but the warhorse, the one that fights in armor, how could he mount that? For he could not carry the shield that cavalrymen need, nor a breastplate or helmet; and how could he handle a spear, who could not even brandish the shaft of a missile or an arrow, since in matters of war he is still like a child who lisps?” “Then there is something else, Damis,” said Apollonius, “that drives this elephant and sends it on, and it is not this driver, whom you all but worship in your amazement.” When Damis said, “What could that be, Apollonius? I see nothing on the beast but the boy,” Apollonius said: “This animal is the best taught of all, and once it has been compelled to live under a man, it bears everything that comes from the man and cultivates a likeness of character to him. It is glad to be fed from his hand, like the little dogs; it approaches and fawns on him with its trunk, and it lets him thrust his head into its throat and keeps its mouth open for as long as the man sees fit, as we saw among the nomads. But at night it is said to lament its slavery, by Zeus, not with the shrill cry it usually makes, but in a pitiful and piteous tone; and if a man comes upon it while it is mourning like this, the elephant checks its lament, as though ashamed. So it is itself, Damis, that rules itself, and the persuasion of its own nature leads it more than the one who sits on it and directs it.”
12| At the Indus they saw, so they say, a herd of elephants wading across, and learned the following about the animal: that some of them live in marshes, others in the mountains, and a third kind on the plains, and that men take them to use in war. For they fight equipped with towers large enough to hold ten and fifteen Indians together, from which the Indians shoot arrows and hurl javelins, as though throwing from city gates. The animal itself treats its trunk as a hand and uses it for hurling. The Libyan elephant exceeds a Nisaean horse in size by as much as the Indian elephants exceed those of Libya. About the age of the animal, and that they are the longest-lived of creatures, others have already written; but these men say too that near Taxila, the greatest city of India, they met an elephant, which the local people anoint with perfume and decorate with ribbons. For this, they said, was one of those who fought against Alexander on behalf of Porus, and because it had fought so eagerly, Alexander dedicated it to the Sun. Gold rings encircled its tusks, or horns, whichever they are, and on them was an inscription in Greek letters, reading: ‘Alexander, son of Zeus, to the Sun dedicates Ajax.’ For he gave the elephant this name, thinking so great a creature worthy of a great name. The natives reckoned that it was three hundred and fifty years since the battle, without saying how old it was when it fought.
13| Juba, who once ruled the Libyan nation, says that Libyan horsemen long ago fought one another from elephants, some of the elephants having a tower engraved on their tusks and the others nothing. When night put an end to the battle, he says, those with the mark were defeated and fled to Mount Atlas; and he himself, four hundred years later, captured one of the fugitives, and its mark was hollowed and not yet worn down by time. This Juba takes the tusks to be horns, because they grow from the same place as the temples and are sharpened against nothing else, but stay as they grew and do not fall out and grow again as teeth do. I do not accept his account. For if not all horns, at least those of deer fall out and grow again; and while the teeth of men all fall out and grow back, in no other animal would a tusk or a canine fall out of itself, nor would it return once fallen, since nature fits them into the jaws for the sake of defense. Besides, horns turn a ring around the base each year, as goats, flocks and cattle show, whereas a tusk grows out smooth, and unless something damages it, it stays the same forever, for it shares in the stony stuff and substance. Moreover, bearing horns is confined to animals with cloven hooves, whereas this animal has five toes and a many-parted foot, which, not being bound up in hooves, stands as though on something liquid. And in all horned animals nature lays down a spongy bone and grows the horn around it on the outside, but in elephants it makes the tusk solid and uniform throughout; when it is split open, only a thin channel runs through the middle, as in teeth. The tusks of the marsh elephants are livid and porous and awkward to work, for in many places hollows lie hidden within them and in many places hard lumps stand up that do not yield to the craftsman’s tools; those of the mountain elephants are smaller than these but quite white, with nothing hard to work in them; the best are the tusks of the plains elephants, for they are the largest and whitest, pleasant to carve, and they take whatever shape the hand wants. And if the characters of elephants must be recorded too, the Indians consider those caught in the marshes foolish and light, those from the mountains ill-natured and treacherous, and, unless they need something, unreliable toward men; but the plains elephants are said to be good and easy to lead and lovers of imitation. At any rate they draw and dance, they sway to the sound of the pipe, and they leap from the ground.
14| When Apollonius saw the elephants crossing the Indus, about thirty of them, I think, led by the smallest among them, and the bigger ones having taken their young up onto the projecting tusks and linked their trunks for the sake of a bond, he said: “Damis, no one gives these animals orders; they do this of themselves, from understanding and wisdom. Do you see how, like people carrying baggage, they have lifted up their young and are bringing them across, tied fast?” “I see, Apollonius,” said Damis, “how wisely and intelligently they do it.” “What, then,” said Apollonius, becomes of that foolish worry of the quibblers, whether affection toward offspring is natural or not? For even elephants cry aloud that it comes to them from nature; they certainly did not learn it from men, as they did the rest, since they have not yet lived with men at all, but possessing love by nature they care for what they have borne and rear their young. And do not name the elephants, Damis; for this animal I rank second only to man in understanding and in counsel. Rather I think of the bears, which, though the wildest of beasts, will do anything for their cubs; and of the wolves, which are always bent on plunder, yet the female guards what she has borne while the male, to keep the whelps alive, brings her food; and likewise of the leopards, which in their heat delight in becoming mothers, for then they want to lord it over the males and rule the household, and the males put up with everything from them, overcome by their love of the young. There is also a tale told of lionesses, that they take leopards as lovers and receive them on the lions’ beds in the plains, but when the womb’s time comes they flee to the mountains and the haunts of the leopards, for they bear spotted young; so they hide them and nurse them in tangled thickets, pretending to be away hunting for the day. For if the lions should detect it, they tear the cubs to pieces and rend the offspring as bastard. You have surely come across one of the Homeric lions, how fiercely he looks on behalf of his own cubs and braces himself to take up the fight. And they say that in this country, and around the Red Sea, the tigress, a most dangerous creature, rushes at ships demanding back her cubs; when she gets them she goes off glad, but if the ships sail away she howls on the shore and sometimes dies. And as for the birds, who does not know their ways? Eagles and storks will not build their nests unless they first fit into them, the one the eagle-stone and the other the lamp-stone, to help the laying of eggs and to keep snakes from coming near them. And if we look at what is in the sea, we should not wonder at the dolphins if, being kindly creatures, they love their young; but how shall we not wonder at whales and seals and the tribes that bear live young, when a seal that I saw myself at Aegae, kept shut up for the hunting shows, grieved so over its dead cub, which it had borne in its little pen, that it would not accept food for three days, though it is the greediest of beasts; and when the whale takes its young into the hollows of its throat whenever it flees from something larger than itself? And a viper was once seen licking the snakes it had borne and tending them with its tongue stretched out. Let us not, Damis, accept the foolish story that vipers are born without mothers, for neither nature nor experience has allowed it.” Damis answered: “Then you agree that Euripides is to be praised for that iambic line in which he has Andromache say: ‘For all human beings, then, children are their very life?’” “I agree,” said Apollonius, “for it was said wisely and with divine insight, but it would have been far wiser and truer had it been sung of all living creatures.” “You seem, Apollonius,” said Damis, “to be rewriting the line so that we may sing it thus: ‘For all living creatures, then, children are their very life.’ And I follow you, for it is better.”
15| “But tell me this: did we not say at the beginning of our talk that there is wisdom in elephants and intelligence in what they do?” “And with good reason, Damis, we said it,” said Apollonius, “for if intelligence did not steer this animal, neither it nor the nations in which it is found would survive.” “Then why,” said Damis, “do they make the crossing so foolishly and not to their own advantage? For the smallest leads, as you see, a slightly larger one follows him, then another bigger than that, and the greatest all come last. They ought, I think, to go in the opposite order and make the greatest their walls and bulwarks.” “But, Damis,” said Apollonius, “first of all they seem to be fleeing from pursuit by men, whom we may well meet following their tracks; and against those who press behind, it is the rear that must be fenced off, as in wars, so reckon this the most tactical of animals. Then there is the crossing. If the largest of them went in first, they would give no indication of the water, whether all would get across; for to those who are tallest the passage is easy and without difficulty, but to those who do not rise above the current it is hard and impassable. When the smallest has passed over, it already reports to the rest that the way is harmless. And besides, the bigger ones going in first would make the river deeper for the small, since the mud must settle into pits under the weight of the beast and the thickness of its feet, whereas the smaller ones would do no harm to the passage of the larger, since they dig fewer pits.”
16| I myself found in the writings of Juba that they also help one another in the hunt and stand over one who has given out, and if they drag him clear, they stand around him like physicians and smear his wounds with the juice of aloe. Many such things they philosophized about, making what was worth recounting their starting-points.
17| As for what Nearchus and Pythagoras said about the river Acesines, that it flows into the Indus and breeds snakes seventy cubits long, let such things be as they have been told, and let me reserve my account for the dragons, whose hunting Damis describes. When they had come to the Indus and were at the crossing of the river, they put it to the Babylonian whether he knew anything about the river, inquiring about the crossing; but he said that he had never made the voyage on it and had no idea where it is navigated from. “Why then,” they said, “did you not hire a guide?” “Because there is one to guide us,” he said, and at the same time showed them a letter that would accomplish this. It was then, they say, that they admired Vardanes for his kindness and care; for he had dispatched this letter to the satrap in charge of the Indus, although the man was not subject to his own rule, reminding him of a benefaction, and saying that he would not ask for any favor in return for it, since it was not in his character to demand repayment, but that if the satrap received Apollonius and sent him where he wished, he would be grateful. He also gave gold to the guide, so that if he found Apollonius in need he might give it, and Apollonius need not look to another’s hand. When the Indian received the letter, he said that he was thought worthy of great things, and that he would take as much pains over the man as if the king of the Indians were writing on his behalf. He gave him the satrap’s own ship to embark on, and other boats in which the camels were carried, and a guide for the whole country that the Hydraotes bounds; and he wrote to his own king that he should be no worse than Vardanes toward a man who was both Greek and divine.
18| So they crossed the Indus in this way, a distance of about forty stadia, for that is how much of it is navigable. About this river they write the following: that the Indus begins in the Caucasus, at the very start larger than any of the rivers of Asia, and that as it advances it makes many of the navigable rivers its own; that, acting like the Nile, it floods India, brings earth upon the land, and lets the Indians sow in the manner of the Egyptians. As for the snows of the Ethiopian and Catadupan mountains, I do not think it right to contradict, because of those who have spoken of them, yet I do not agree when I reckon that the Indus does the same as the Nile, since the country above it is not snowed upon. Besides, I know that the god shows the Ethiopians and Indians as horns of the entire earth, and makes some of them black from the rising sun and others from its setting; how could that happen to men if they did not also roast in winter? And land which the sun warms the whole year round, how could one think that it is snowed on, or that snow becomes the supplier for the rivers there to rise above their own measures? And even if snow did come to places so sunny, how could it pour out into so great a sea? And how could it suffice for a river that sinks
19| Egypt? As they were carried along the Indus, they say they met many river horses and many crocodiles, as people do who sail the Nile; and they say the Indus has flowers like those that grow up on the Nile, and that the seasons in India are mild in winter and stifling in summer, and that against this the divinity has contrived the best remedy, for the country is frequently rained on. They say too that they heard from the Indians that the king comes to this river when the seasons make it rise, and sacrifices to it bulls and black horses (for the Indians rank white below black, I suppose because of their own color); and after the sacrifice, they say, he sinks into the river a golden measure, made like the one with which grain is measured out. For what purpose the king does this, the Indians could not tell them, but they themselves guessed that the measure is sunk either for an abundance of crops, which the farmers measure out, or for a due proportion in the stream, so that it may not come in great volume and flood the land.
20| After they had traveled on beyond the river, the guide sent by the satrap led them straight to Taxila, where the Indian king had his palace. They say that the dress of the people beyond the Indus is of local linen, with sandals of papyrus and a cap for when it rains, and that the more distinguished among them are clothed in fine linen; and the fine linen, they say, comes from a tree resembling the white poplar in its trunk and the willow in its leaves. Apollonius says he was pleased with the fine linen, because it resembles a gray cloak. From India, too, this linen goes to Egypt for many of the temples. Taxila, they say, is about the size of Nineveh, and is walled in moderate proportion, like the cities of Greece; and the palace is that of a man who was then holding the rule of Porus. Before the wall they say they saw a temple not much smaller than a hundred-footer, of shell-stone, and that a sanctuary had been built within it, smaller than suited a temple of such a size and ringed with columns, yet worth admiring. For on each wall bronze plates are fastened, with the deeds of Porus and Alexander pictured on them; the pictures are made with orichalcum, silver, gold and black bronze, showing elephants, horses, soldiers, helmets and shields, while the lances, javelins and swords are all of iron; and as is said of celebrated painting, as if it were a work of Zeuxis, or of Polygnotus and Euphranor, who prized shading and the look of life and what recedes and what projects, so, they say, it shows there too, and the materials have melted together like colors. The very spirit of the picture is pleasing as well. For Porus dedicated these after the death of the Macedonian, and in them the Macedonian is victorious, and recovers Porus when he is wounded, and gives him India, which was henceforth his own to give. It is said too that Porus mourned Alexander when he died and lamented him as a noble and good king; and that while Alexander was alive, after his withdrawal from India, Porus neither spoke anything as a king, though Alexander allowed it, nor gave any order to the Indians, but like a satrap, full of self-restraint, did everything to gratify him.
21| My account does not allow me to pass over what they record about this Porus. As the Macedonian stood on the point of crossing, and some advised Porus to make allies of the peoples beyond the Hyphasis and the river Ganges, since Alexander would never then draw up against an India united in purpose, he said: “If my subject people is so constituted that it cannot be kept safe without allies, then not ruling is better for me.” When someone reported to him that Alexander had captured Darius the king, he said: “But not a man.” When the mahout had decked out the elephant on which he was to fight, and said, “This one will carry you, my king,” he said: “No, it is I who will carry him, if I prove a man true to myself.” When they proposed that he sacrifice to the river so that it would not receive the Macedonians’ rafts and Alexander would find no easy passage, he said: “Cursing does not belong to men who have weapons.” After the battle, when even Alexander thought Porus divine and beyond human nature, and one of his kinsmen said, “If you had done obeisance to him when he crossed, Porus, you would not have been beaten in battle, so many Indians would not have perished, and you yourself would not have been wounded,” Porus said: “I had heard that Alexander was most ambitious for honor, and I understood that if I did obeisance he would think me a slave, but if I fought him, a king; and I thought it better to be admired than pitied, and I was not deceived. For by presenting myself as Alexander saw me, I both lost everything and gained everything in a single day.” That is what is reported of this Indian; he was, they say, the most beautiful of the Indians, of a height such as no one had attained since the heroes at Troy, and very young when he fought Alexander.
22| During the time that he stayed in the temple, which was long, until it was reported to the king that strangers had come, Apollonius said: “Damis, is there such a thing as painting?” “Yes,” said Damis, “if truth is anything.” “And what does this art accomplish?” “It blends together all the colors there are, the blue with the green, the white with the black, and the red with the pale.” “And for what purpose,” said Apollonius, “does it mix these? For not merely for the sake of the color, as wax-painters do.” “For imitation,” said Damis, “and to make likenesses of dog and horse, man and ship, and everything the sun looks upon; and it makes likenesses even of the sun itself, sometimes on a four-horse chariot, as he is said to appear in these parts, and sometimes again blazing across the sky, when it sketches in the upper air and the home of the gods.” “Painting, then, is imitation, Damis?” “What else?” said Damis. “For if it did not do that, it would seem a foolish business of making colors for nothing.” “And what is seen in the sky,” said Apollonius, “when clouds are torn apart from each other, centaurs and goat-stags and, by Zeus, wolves and horses, what will you say of those? Are they not works of imitation?” “It seems so,” said Damis. “Then is God a painter, Damis, and does he leave the winged chariot on which he travels ordering the affairs of gods and men, and sit down then to play and paint these things, like children in the sand?” Damis blushed, because the argument seemed to have fallen into so absurd a place. Apollonius did not look down on him, for he was never harsh toward refutations, but said: “Is this not what you mean to say, Damis, that those things are carried across the sky without meaning and by chance, so far as the god is concerned, and that it is we, who have imitation by nature, who give them shape and form?” “Let us rather hold that, Apollonius,” said Damis, “for it is more plausible and far better.” “Then imitation is twofold, Damis, and we should hold that one kind copies with the hand as well as the mind, and this is painting, while the other makes likenesses with the mind alone.” “Not twofold,” said Damis; “rather we should regard as the more complete the one that is painting, which can make a likeness with both mind and hand, and the other as a part of it, since a man who is no painter understands and imitates with his mind, but would not use his hand to paint these things.” “Is he then, Damis,” said Apollonius, “maimed in his hand by some blow or disease?” “By Zeus, no,” said Damis, “but because he has never touched a stylus or any tool or color, and is unskilled in painting.” “Then we both agree, Damis, that imitation comes to men from nature, but painting from art. And this would appear to hold for modeling too. And I think you should not suppose painting itself to be only what is done with colors; for one color was enough for it in the older painters, and as it advanced it took up four and then more. But line also, and what is done without color, which is composed of shadow and light, deserves to be called painting. For in such drawings likeness is seen, and form, and thought, and modesty and boldness, though they are bereft of colors, and they do not indicate blood, or the bloom of any hair or beard, but composed in a single manner they resemble a fair-haired man and a pale one alike. And if we draw one of these Indians in white line, he will surely look black; for the snub nose, the stiff curls, the prominent jaw, and the sort of startled look about the eyes darken what is seen and mark out an Indian for those who look with understanding. For this reason I would say that those who look at the works of painting also need the faculty of imitation. For no one could praise a painted horse or bull without calling to mind the creature it is made to resemble, nor could anyone admire the Ajax of Timomachus, whom he has painted in madness, unless he took into his mind some image of Ajax, and how it is likely that, having slaughtered the herds of cattle at Troy, he sits exhausted, planning to kill himself as well. But these ingenious works of Porus, Damis, let us declare neither the work of metalworking alone, for they are made like paintings, nor of painting, since they were wrought in bronze; rather let us suppose that one man, both painter and metalworker, contrived them, like what is shown in Homer in Hephaestus’ work on the shield of Achilles. For these too are full of killers and killed, and you will say that the earth is blood-stained, though it is bronze.”
23| While the man was busy with such talk, messengers and an interpreter came from the king, saying that the king would make him his guest for three days, for it was the custom that strangers should not mix with the city for longer, and they led him to the palace. I have said what the city has in the way of a wall; they say that its streets are cut irregularly, in the Athenian manner, and that it is built up with houses which, if one sees them from outside, have a single story, but if one goes inside, turn out to have underground stories as well, with as much space below the earth as above.
24| They say they saw a temple of the Sun, to which the elephant Ajax was dedicated, and golden statues of Alexander and others of Porus, and these were of black bronze. As for the walls of the temple, gold flashes from fiery-red stones, giving off a gleam like a ray of light. The sacred image itself is composed of pearl-shell, in the symbolic manner which all barbarians use for their temples.
25| Around the palace they say they saw no massive buildings, no spearmen or guards, but, as around the houses of men of distinction, a few servants, and three or four, I think, in need of a word with the king; and they admired this orderliness more than the swollen splendor at Babylon, and much more when they passed inside; for the men’s halls, the porticoes and the whole courtyard, they say, were kept in restrained good order.
26| Apollonius thought the Indian was a philosopher, and calling the interpreter to him he said: “I rejoice, my king, to see that you are a philosopher.” “And I rejoice all the more,” said the king, “since you think so of me.” “Is this the custom among you,” said Apollonius, “or did you establish your rule on this moderate footing yourself?” “The custom is a temperate one,” he said, “and I keep it more temperately still. I have more than any man, yet I need little, for most of what I have I count as belonging to my friends.” “Blessed in your treasury,” said Apollonius, “if you draw your friends in exchange for gold and silver, from whom much good grows up for you.” “And indeed,” said the king, “I share my wealth with my enemies too. For the barbarians who have always been at odds with this country, living near and making raids across my borders, I win over with this money, and the land is guarded for me by them, and they neither come against my land themselves nor let in the barbarians who border them, who are harsh.” When Apollonius asked him whether Porus too had paid them money, he said: “Porus was in love with war, and I with peace.” With these words he quite won Apollonius over, and Apollonius was so overcome by him that once, when rebuking Euphrates for not being a philosopher, he said: “Let us have respect at least for the Indian Phraotes.” For this was the Indian’s name. When the satrap, having been honored by him with great gifts, wished to bind his head with a gold headband set with colored stones, Phraotes said: “If I were among those who covet such things, I would have refused them now and cast them from my head, having met Apollonius; but since I never before thought fit to wear them, how should I now be adorned, overlooking my guest and forgetting myself?” Apollonius then questioned him about his manner of living, and he said: “I drink only so much wine as I pour out to the Sun; what I take in hunting others eat, and for myself exercise is enough. My own food is vegetables, the hearts of palms, the fruit of the palms, and whatever the river grows in its gardens. Many things also grow for me from trees, whose cultivators are these very hands.” Hearing this, Apollonius was delighted, and kept looking toward Damis.
27| When they had talked enough about the road to the Brahmans, Phraotes gave orders for the guide sent by the Babylonian to be entertained in the way he used to entertain those who came from Babylon, and the satrap’s man to leave with provisions; and taking Apollonius by the hand, and bidding the interpreter go away, he said: “Would you make me your drinking companion?” He asked it in the Greek tongue. Apollonius was astonished and said, “Why did you not speak with me so from the start?” “I was afraid,” said Phraotes, “of seeming bold, not knowing myself, nor that fortune has made me seem a barbarian; but I have been overcome by you, since I see that you take pleasure in me, and I could not hide myself. How full I am of the Greek tongue I shall show in many ways.” “Then why,” said Apollonius, “did you not yourself invite me to the banquet, and instead tell me to invite you?” “Because I consider you better than myself,” said Phraotes, “for wisdom has more of the royal in it.” At once he took Apollonius and his party along to the place where he usually bathed. This bath was a park a stadium in length, with a pool dug in the middle that received springs of cold drinking water, and on either side were running tracks, on which he trained himself in the Greek manner with javelin and discus; for his body was strong, both from his age (he was twenty-seven years old) and from exercising in this way. When he had had enough, he would leap into the water and exercise himself by swimming. When they had bathed, they went to the common meal wearing garlands, as is the custom among the Indians whenever they drink at the king’s table.
28| It is worth not passing over the arrangement of the drinking party, which Damis has recorded clearly. The king dines on a couch of leaves, with up to five of his kinsmen nearest him, while all the rest eat together on seats. A table, like an altar, is built up in the middle to the height of a man’s knee, covering the space of a chorus of thirty men gathered together, and on it laurels are strewn, along with other boughs like myrtle, which produce a perfume for the Indians. There are laid out fish and birds, whole lions, gazelles and pigs, and the loins of tigers; for the rest of that animal they refuse to eat, since they say that this creature, as soon as it is born, lifts its forefeet to the Sun as he rises. Each guest rises, goes to the table, picks up some of these dishes and cuts off others, and returns to his own seat and fills himself, frequently eating bread with the meat. When they have had enough, mixing bowls of silver and gold are brought in, one enough for ten drinking companions, and they drink from them bending over, like cattle at the watering. Between drinks they bring in displays of daring that are dangerous and not without seriousness. A boy, like those of the dancing girls, is thrown lightly upward while an arrow is shot upward together with him, and when he is high above the ground the boy turns a somersault, lifting himself over the arrow; and if he fails in the somersault, he is certain to be struck. For the archer, before he lets fly, goes around the drinkers, showing the point and offering proof of the shaft. To shoot with a bow through a sling, to aim at a hair, and to outline his own son with arrows as he stands against a board: these they take pains over at their drinking, and they succeed at them while drunk.
29| Damis and his companions were amazed at these feats as well-aimed, and admired the precision of the archery; but Apollonius, who was dining with the king and sharing his table, paid them less attention, and said to the king: “Tell me, my king, how do you come to have the Greek tongue? And where does this philosophy of yours come from, here? For I do not think you trace it to teachers, since it is not likely there are any among the Indians who teach it.” The king laughed and said: “The ancients used to put the question to those who sailed in, whether they were pirates, regarding it as so common, though it is a grim thing; and you seem to me to ask those who visit you whether they are philosophers, as though you think that this too, though the most divine of human things, belongs to anyone who happens along. And I know that among you it is the same as piracy; for they say it is not possible to meet a man like you, but that the many have stripped it from others like spoil and wear it ill-fitting, trailing a garment that is not their own and strutting in it. And, by Zeus, just as pirates live in luxury knowing that they are under the sentence of justice, so they say those men give themselves to the belly and to love and to fine clothing. This is why: among you there are laws, I think, by which, if a man debases the coinage he is put to death, and likewise if one fraudulently enrolls a child, or whatever the penalty for that may be; but for those who counterfeit or corrupt philosophy there is no law among you, I think, and no magistrate is appointed over them.”
30| “Among us few take up philosophy, and they are tested in this way. The young man, when he reaches the age of eighteen, which I think is also the measure of an ephebe among you, must go beyond the river Hyphasis to the men to whom you are hastening, having first declared publicly that he will philosophize, so that anyone who wishes may keep him out if he comes unclean. By clean I mean first what concerns his father and mother, that no reproach appear against them; then their parents, and the third generation upward, that there be no violent man, or one without self-control, or an unjust moneymaker. When no scar appears among these, and no brand at all, then the young man himself is examined and tested: first, whether he has a good memory; then, whether he is modest by nature and not pretending it; whether he is not drunken, not greedy, not boastful, not given to laughter, not bold, not abusive; whether he is obedient to his father, his mother, his teachers and his tutors; and above all, whether he has not abused the bloom of his youth. What concerns his parents and their parents is gathered from witnesses and from records that are kept publicly. For when an Indian dies, one magistrate appointed by the laws comes to his door to record how he lived; and if the magistrate lies or is deceived, the laws forbid him from ever holding any office again, as one who has falsified the life of a man. The qualities of the youths themselves they learn by looking at them. For the eyes disclose many of the habits of human beings, and much lies in the eyebrows and cheeks for judging and observing, from which wise men and students of nature behold the minds of men as images in a mirror. For since philosophy is held in great esteem here, and has this honor among the Indians, it is wholly necessary that those who approach it be thoroughly examined and put to countless tests. How we pursue it under teachers, and how philosophy among us is subject to scrutiny, I have clearly said; and my own case stands thus.
31| I was born of a grandfather who was a king and bore my name, and of a father who was a private man. For my father was left behind a mere youth, and two of his kinsmen became his guardians according to the laws of the Indians; but they conducted the royal business on his behalf neither well, by the Sun, nor moderately, so that they appeared harsh to their subjects and the rule had a bad name. Some of the powerful men therefore conspired against them, attacked them at a festival, and killed them as they sacrificed to the Indus; and they themselves leaped into the rule and seized the state. My father’s kinsmen, then, fearing for him, since he had not yet reached his sixteenth year, sent him over the Hyphasis to the king there. This king rules over more than I do, and his country is far happier than this one. When the king wished to make him his son, my father declined, saying that he would not contend with Fortune, who had taken the rule from him, but asked the king to allow him to philosophize by going to the wise men, for so he would more easily endure the troubles at home. When the king wished also to restore him to his father’s rule, he said: ‘If you perceive that I am genuinely philosophizing, restore me; if not, let me be as I am.’ So the king himself came to the wise men and said that he would obtain great things from them if they would look after the boy, who was already noble in nature; and they, seeing something more in him, were glad to give him a share of their wisdom and taught him eagerly, since he applied himself fully to learning. In the seventh year the king fell ill, and it was then that he died; he sent for my father, appointed him partner in the rule with his son, and betrothed to him his daughter, who was of marriageable age. But my father, when he saw the king’s son overcome by flatterers and wine and such evils, and full of suspicion toward him, said: ‘Keep these things yourself and glut yourself on the whole rule; for it would be foolish for one who was unable to win even the kingdom that belonged to him to seem boldly to come after one that does not. Give me your sister instead; for this alone of your possessions is enough for me.’ And having received the marriage, he lived near the wise men in seven prosperous villages, which the king gave his sister for her girdle. I am the child of this marriage, and my father, having schooled me in the things of the Greeks, brings me to the wise men, perhaps before the proper age, for I was then twelve years old; and they brought me up just as they would their own child, for those whom they receive knowing the Greek tongue they love the more, as already belonging to them by likeness of character.
32| When my parents died, not long after one another, the wise men themselves bade me, when I was nineteen years old, to travel to the villages and see to my own affairs. But my excellent uncle had already taken the villages from me, and had not even left me the small plots my father had held, saying that they all belonged to his own rule, and that I might get great things from him if he let me live. So I gathered a contribution from my mother’s freedmen and had four attendants. And while I was reading the play The Children of Heracles, someone arrived from here bringing a letter from a man who was a friend of my father, who told me to cross the river Hydraotes and meet him about the rule here, for there were many hopes that I could recover it if I did not delay. Some god, I think, put the play into my mind, and I followed the omen; and when I had crossed the river, I heard that one of those who had seized the rule by force was dead, and that the second was being besieged in this very palace. I went on, then, pressing forward and shouting to the folk of the villages I was passing through, declaring myself the son of a certain man and on my way to my own rule; and they, rejoicing and greeting me, sent me forward, thinking me like my grandfather. They had daggers and bows, and we were always growing in number; and when I came up to the gates, the people here received me so gladly that they kindled torches at the Sun’s altar, came out in front of the gates and led me here, singing many praises of my father and my grandfather. As for the drone inside, they shut him in around the wall, although I begged that he should not be killed in such a way.”
33| Apollonius answered: “You have gone through, quite precisely, the return of the Heracleidae, and the gods are to be praised for their purpose, since they helped a noble man to return as he came to his own. But tell me this about the wise men: did they not once come under Alexander, and, being brought to him, philosophize about the sky?” “Those were the Oxydracae,” said Phraotes. “That nation is always claiming freedom and is equipped for war, and they say they practice wisdom without knowing anything good. But those who are truly wise lie between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, and Alexander never even came to this country, not because he feared anything in it, but because, I think, the sacrifices gave him a sign. And even supposing he crossed the Hyphasis and proved able to capture the country around them, the stronghold in which they dwell he could not have mastered, not if he had led ten thousand Achilleses and thirty thousand Ajaxes. For they do not fight those who approach, but, being sacred and dear to the gods, they drive them off with portents from Zeus and thunderbolts. At any rate, they say that when the Egyptian Heracles and Dionysus overran the nation of the Indians under arms, they once drove against them, devising siege engines and testing the place at the same time. The wise men offered no resistance, but, as it appeared to those men, stayed quiet; but when they themselves approached, fiery blasts drove them back, and thunderbolts whirling downward fell upon their arms; and Heracles is said to have lost his shield there, which was of gold, and the wise men made it a dedication, both for the fame of Heracles and for the figure on the shield. For Heracles himself is shown on it, marking the boundary at Gades, making the mountains his pillars, and drawing the Ocean in toward the inner lands; which makes plain that it was the Egyptian Heracles, and not the Theban, who went to Gades and became the setter of the bounds of the earth.”
34| While they were talking in this way, the hymn came in, together with a pipe; and when Apollonius asked the king what the revel meant, he said: “The Indians sing exhortations to the king when he is about to go to sleep, so that his dreams may be good and he may rise up a good king, and easy of approach for his subjects.” “How then, my king,” said Apollonius, “are you disposed toward this? For it is you, I take it, they pipe to.” “I do not laugh at it,” said Phraotes, “for it must be accepted for the sake of the custom; yet I need no exhortation, for whatever a king does moderately and well, he does rather as a favor to himself than to his subjects.”
35| After this conversation they went to rest, and when day began to show, the king himself came to the chamber in which Apollonius and his companions were sleeping, and feeling his way to the couch, he addressed the man and asked what he was thinking: “For you are surely not asleep,” he said, “drinking water and laughing at wine.” “Do you suppose,” said Apollonius, “that those who drink water do not sleep?” “They sleep,” said Phraotes, “but a thin sleep, one which we might say settles only on the tips of their eyes and not on the mind.” “On both,” said Apollonius, “and perhaps more upon the mind; since if the mind is not still, the eyes will not receive sleep either. At any rate madmen cannot sleep, because of the leaping of the mind; as their thought goes from one thing to another, they look up more fiercely and more shamelessly, like the sleepless among serpents. Since then, my king, the work of sleep has been clearly set out, and what it shows to men, let us consider what the water-drinker will lose in sleep compared with the drunken man.” “Do not play the sophist,” said the king. “If you suppose a drunken man, he will not sleep this sleep, for his mind, raving like a Bacchant, will whirl him about and fill him with disturbance. All those who try to sleep off drunkenness seem to be sent up to the roof, and again to be underground, and a whirl falls upon them, such as is said to befall Ixion. I do not ask you, then, to consider the drunken man, but the one who has drunk wine and is still sober: consider how he will sleep, and how far better than the man who takes no wine.”
36| Apollonius then called Damis and said: “The argument is against a formidable man, one well practiced in conversation.” “I see,” said Damis; “and perhaps this is what it means to meet the man with the black rump. The argument he has stated takes me quite captive too; it is time, then, for you, now you are awake, to bring it to its end.” Apollonius raised his head and said: “Well then, I shall show how much we water-drinkers have the advantage in sleeping more sweetly, holding to your own argument. That the mind is disturbed in drunkards and they are in a more frenzied state, you have said clearly; for we see those held by drink fancying that they behold a pair of moons and a pair of suns, whereas those who have drunk less, even if they are quite sober, think none of these things, but are full of cheerfulness and pleasure, which falls upon them, often not even from good fortune; such men rehearse lawsuits though they have never yet spoken in a court, and say they are rich when they have not a drachma at home. These, my king, are the experiences of frenzy; for pleasure itself stirs the mind, and I know many who think they are doing very well who cannot sleep but leap out of sleep, and this would be how even good fortune brings its cares. There are also drugs for sleep devised by men, which they drink or rub on and then sleep, stretching themselves out as though dead; and they rise with a kind of forgetfulness, and are rather somewhere else than where they seem to be.” That what is drunk, or rather what is poured over the soul and the body, brings in a sleep that is neither genuine nor natural, but either deep and half-dead, or shallow and torn apart by the things that rush in upon it, you will perhaps agree, even when the drinks are good ones, unless you care more for contentiousness than for debate. But my drinking companions see what exists as existing, and what does not exist they neither write down for themselves nor sketch in imagination; they have never yet seemed light, nor full of sluggishness or foolishness, nor merrier than is fitting, but are steady and full of reasoning, the same in the late afternoon as at the hour when the marketplace is full. For these men do not nod off, even if they keep busy far into the night. Sleep does not drive them out like a master pressing upon a neck enslaved by wine, but they appear free and upright; and when they fall asleep, they receive sleep with a clean soul, neither lifted out of it by good fortune nor leaping out of it because of some misfortune. For the sober soul is in due measure toward both of these and is overcome by neither passion, and so it sleeps most sweetly and painlessly, not driven out of its sleep.
37| Moreover, the prophecy that comes from dreams, which seems the most divine of human things, is discerned more easily by the soul when it is not clouded by wine but receives it undefiled and surveys it from every side. At any rate the interpreters of visions, whom the poets call dream-diviners, would answer no vision until they had first asked the hour at which it was seen. If it is a morning vision, from the sleep around dawn, they interpret it as the soul prophesying soundly, once it has washed off the wine; but if it comes around the first sleep or in the middle of the night, when the soul has sunk deep and is still clouded by the wine, they decline to give an answer, being wise. That the gods too approve of this, and place oracular power in sober souls, I shall show clearly. There was among the Greeks, my king, a man, Amphiaraus, a seer.” “I know,” said Phraotes, “you mean the son of Oicles, whom the earth swallowed alive as he was returning from Thebes.” “This man, my king,” said Apollonius, “now gives oracles in Attica by sending dreams to those who consult him, and the priests, taking the consultant, forbid him food for one day and wine for three, so that his soul may draw in the oracles shining clearly; but if wine were a good drug for sleep, the wise Amphiaraus would have ordered the visitors to be brought into his sanctuary prepared in the opposite way, full of wine like jars. I could name many other well-known oracles among Greeks and barbarians, in which the priest draws in water, not wine, and then utters what comes from the tripod. Consider me also inspired by a god, my king, and all who drink water; for we are seized by the nymphs and are Bacchants of sobriety.” “Will you then, Apollonius,” said Phraotes, “make me too a member of your band?” “If you will not seem tiresome to your subjects,” said Apollonius; “for philosophy in a king, if it is moderate and relaxed, produces a marvelous blend, as shows in you; but philosophy that is strict and overstretched is tiresome, my king, and appears beneath your royal state, and the envious would think it had a measure of vanity in it.”
38| After this conversation, since it was already day, they went outside. Apollonius, realizing that the king must give a hearing to embassies and the like, said: “You, my king, attend to what belongs to your rule, and give me this time for the Sun, for I must offer my customary prayer.” “And may he hear you as you pray,” said Phraotes, “for he will be gracious to all who delight in your wisdom. I shall wait for you to come back; for there are certain cases I have to judge, and if you are present at them, you will help me greatly.”
39| When Apollonius came back, when the day was already well advanced, he asked about the cases Phraotes had judged. “Today I did not judge,” said Phraotes, “for the sacrifices did not permit me.” “Do you then,” said Apollonius, “make these decisions also by sacrifices, as you do your marches and campaigns?” “Yes, by Zeus,” said Phraotes, “for here too there is danger, if the judge is carried away from what is straight.” This seemed well said to Apollonius, and he asked him again what the case was that he was to judge. “For I see you,” he said, “standing perplexed about how to cast your vote.” “I admit I am perplexed,” said Phraotes, “and so I make you my adviser. A man sold land to another, and in it a treasure lay hidden, not yet known; some time later the earth split and revealed a chest of gold. The man who sold the land says it belongs rather to himself, for he would never have parted with the land had he known in advance of the wealth in it; but the buyer claims that what he found in land that was now his own is his by purchase. Each man’s claim is just, and I should seem foolish if I ordered both men to split the gold, since even an old woman could arbitrate that.” Apollonius answered: “That these two men are not philosophers is shown by their quarreling over gold; but you will seem to me to judge best if you reflect on this: that the gods take care first of those who philosophize with virtue, and second of those who are free from fault and have never been thought to do wrong. To the philosophers they grant the power to discern rightly things divine and human, and to the others who are good they grant a sufficient livelihood, so that they may never become unjust for lack of necessities. It seems to me, my king, that you should weigh these two as on a balance and examine the life of both; for the gods would not, I think, take away from the one even the land, unless he were worthless, and give the other in addition what lies beneath the land, unless he were better than the seller.” Both came to be judged on the next day, and the seller was shown to be a violent man who had neglected the sacrifices he ought to have offered to the gods in the earth, while the other appeared a reasonable man who served the gods most piously. So the judgment of Apollonius prevailed, and the good man went away holding the treasure as from the gods.
40| When the case had gone in this way, Apollonius went up to the Indian and said: “Today is the third of the days on which you made me your guest, my king, and at tomorrow’s dawn I must go out, following the law.” “But the law,” said Phraotes, “is not yet addressing you, for you may stay tomorrow also, since you arrived after midday.” “I am glad of the hospitality,” said Apollonius, “for you seem to me to be using sophistry on the law because of me.” “If I could even have repealed it,” said Phraotes, “I would have, for your sake. But tell me this, Apollonius: the camels on which they say you ride, do they not bring you from Babylon?” “From there,” said Apollonius, “Vardanes having given them.” “Will they still be able to carry you away, having already come so many stadia from Babylon?” Apollonius was silent, but Damis said: “This man, my king, does not yet understand the length of the journey, nor the nations through which our road still lies, but, as though he would have you and Vardanes everywhere, he considers coming among the Indians a game. Indeed he has not admitted to you how matters stand with the camels; for they are in such poor condition that they are rather carried by us, and others are needed. For if they should kneel down somewhere in the deserts of India, we shall sit driving the vultures and wolves away from the camels, and none of us will drive them away from ourselves, for we shall perish as well.” The king took him up. "I will remedy that," he said. "I will give you other camels (four, I think, is what you need), and the satrap in charge of the Indus will send another four to Babylon. On the Indus I keep a herd of camels, every one of them white." "And will you not give us a guide, king?" said Damis. "Yes, and I will give the guide a camel too, and provisions," he said. "And I shall also send word to Iarchas, eldest of the wise men, so that he may receive Apollonius as a man no worse than himself, and you as philosophers, the followers of a divine man." The Indian also offered gold, and gems, and linen cloths, and countless things of that kind. Apollonius said that he had enough gold, since Vardanes had given it to the guide without anyone seeing; but he accepted the linen cloths, because they resembled the worn cloak of the ancients, the truly Attic ones. And picking up one of the gems, he said, "Excellent stone, how timely and not without the gods' help I have found you!" He had perceived, I suppose, some secret and divine power in it. Damis and his companions would not accept gold either, but they took a good handful of the gems, intending to dedicate them to the gods when they returned to their own homes.
41| They stayed on the following day as well, because the Indian would not release them, and he gave them the letter to Iarchas, which was written as follows: "King Phraotes to Iarchas his teacher and to those with him, greetings. Apollonius, a very wise man, considers you wiser than himself and has come to learn your teachings. Send him back, then, knowing all that you know; for none of your teachings will be lost, since he speaks better than anyone and has a good memory. Let him see, too, the throne on which you seated me, father Iarchas, when you gave me the kingdom. His followers too deserve praise, because they have given themselves over to such a man. Farewell to you, and to all of you."
42| They drove out of Taxila and, after traveling a two days' journey, came to the plain where Porus is said to have fought against Alexander. They say they saw gates on it which enclosed nothing, but had been built to carry trophies. For on them stood a statue of Alexander mounted on a four-pole chariot, just as he stands at Issus over the satraps of Darius. A little distance from each other, they say, two more gates had been built, one bearing Porus and the other Alexander, who had come to terms, I suppose, after the battle; for one seems to be greeting the other, and the other to be bowing down before him.
43| After crossing the river Hydraotes and passing through several peoples, they reached the Hyphasis. Thirty stadia from it they came upon altars inscribed: TO AMMON THE FATHER AND HERACLES HIS BROTHER AND ATHENA FORETHOUGHT AND OLYMPIAN ZEUS AND THE SAMOTHRACIAN CABIRI AND THE SUN OF INDIA AND APOLLO OF DELPHI. They say too that a bronze pillar had been set up, inscribed: ALEXANDER STOPPED HERE. We should consider the altars to be Alexander's, honoring the limit of his own empire; but the pillar, I think, was set up by the Indians beyond the Hyphasis, who were proud that Alexander had advanced no farther.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/apollonius/002-life-of-apollonius-book-ii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.